I woke with what one might call metaphorical clouds hanging over my head.
The day before, everything was as normal as it could be, I had plans and was intending to get on with my life, realizing that Violetta would be disappointed if she knew how moribund I’d become.
That was before Alfie had appeared out of nowhere, on a mission for a man I never wanted to see or work for again.
Never say never.
Now I had a target on my back and found myself in a very strange situation. Normally random events were exactly that, random. But it would not be when the time came for Juliet to accidentally see me, a coincidence surely.
But not.
For a long time, before I fell into a light, fitful sleep, I went through a variety of scenarios when I imagined we would run into each other, and concluded it would most likely be somewhere in St Marks square.
Then it was a matter of whether on not I would make it easy for her, and was still undecided when sleep came. Now, in the cold hard light of dawn, I decided it would be better to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I’d also decided that I was not going to give Larry any chance of success, as I had the element of surprise on my side.
I’d also forgotten about those pre-mission nerves, that mixture of fear and excitement when starting out, usually not knowing what was going to happen. Of course, I was a lot older now, and the world I once lived in had no doubt changed considerably, but not the people in it. They were the one constant, and most were predictable.
Larry certainly would be. Juliet would be less so, but knowing her end game would tip the scales in my favour. How I would deal with her would be dictated on that first meeting.
That too was the fuel for a different sort of feeling. I knew, back when I first met her, my judgement was impaired by a lot of different drugs, and I wasn’t quite thinking straight, but there had been a spark, and in different circumstances, the outcome might have been different. I was not sure what I felt right then.
But, I’d soon find out.
I took a water taxi to St Mark’s square, or just a short distance from it, where the statue of xxx greeted all those who disembarked. From there it was a short walk on the promenade, and instead of heading towards the square, I went in the opposite direction, towards the hotel Juliet was staying.
Getting there early, I was hoping to see her leave the hotel and follow discreetly, waiting for the opportunity to ‘discover’ her. It was not a surprise to discover her ‘friend’ who greeted her at the airport had the same idea.
It was evident that Larry didn’t trust her to keep him informed, or the tail was insurance. Either way, it was a complication.
I found a 0lace to sit, one of many cafes along the promenade, in sight of the hotel entrance and her minder. Judging by the blank expression, it was possible he didn’t know me by sight, which could be useful.
My phone decided to announce an incoming message, and it was from Alfie. The identity of one of the men, muscle for a local crime boss, no doubt lent as a favour to Larry, was Giuseppe, last name irrelevant. The other, one of Larry’s lieutenants here to smooth the path for Larry’s arrival.
Giuseppe’s resume was short, mostly petty crimes, having graduated from peddling knock off’s to the tourists. Judging by his body language, he was unimpressed with being a minder. And restless, because over the next half hour he was up and down, pacing, and not happy, having exchanged words with several people who seemingly had walked in front of him.
Perhaps if I provoked him…
No time, Juliet chose that moment to emerge from the hotel. He was straight out of his seat and walked over to her. She was not pleased to see him, and I watched them engage in a heated exchange over the next five minutes, drawing attention to themselves, and odd glances from a few tourists. At what seemed the end of the argument I saw her shrug, and both headed towards the square together.
It was obvious Giuseppe’s instructions were to stay with her, which I imagine would make her job of a chance meeting all that harder.
I followed, discreetly, behind them.
She ambled, taking the time to look around, much like a tourist would, and basically, she was a tourist. I wondered if she had been to Venice before, and concluded she hadn’t, using her phone camera to take photos of the gondolas, the Canal, the colonnade, the bridge of sighs, and Doges palace; frequently stopping much to Giuseppe’s annoyance.
It took nearly an hour to cover a very short distance, ending up at a Cafe, one of those that jutted out into the square. She sat at one table, and Giuseppe sat at another, not far from her.
When his attention was elsewhere, watching a group of young female American tourists, I came up from behind and sat beside him, so engrossed in the girls he neither saw nor heard me arrive.
And the reason he almost jumped out of his seat when I said, in his language, “So, Giuseppe, what are you up to now?”
When he recovered, he glared at me. “Who are you?” It was not a polite tone.
“Trouble, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“I’m minding my own business. You should too.”
There was an undertone and implied threat.
“Or what?”
I saw him glance over in Juliet’s direction. A waiter just delivered coffee and what looked like a cake.
“Who is she?” I asked.
He turned to look at me. “That’s none of your business.”
It was clear he didn’t know what I looked like and was relying on Juliet to identify me.
“It is if you’re point man of a kidnap team. Is that what this is about.”
Giuseppe laughed. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I’m going over yo that woman you’ve been watching and tell that she has an unwanted admirer, and then if I can find a policeman, I’m going to tell him you’re acting suspiciously.”
His expression told me that was the last thing he needed. I suspect his track record with the police along with a complaint involving a female tourist might just get him into enough trouble to make him think twice about hanging around.
On the other hand, it might not. I could see him hesitating, orders to stay versus trouble with the police. Trouble with the police won out.
He stood. “You have made yourself some difficulties, this isn’t over.”
I shrugged. “It will be if I see you loitering near her again.”
He had his phone in his hand as he left and was making a call before he’d taken 20 paces. The next person wasn’t going to be so easy to spot.
In a day of going over old ground and making it new again, I have revisited Zoe’s residence in Paris at the time John called, and found it empty, except for some kid who was all ‘get lost or suffer the consequences.’
Who is he? We flesh that story out, and how it relates to Zoe and those early days in the story.
Similarly, I’m not happy still with how Worthington discovers Zoe, and this is going to need some more work, and definitely a rewrite.
In fact, I might have to revisit his whole appearance in the story and make it a little less bombastic and a little more subdued seething anger.
The whole Marseilles episode is good, it’s just the end and this discovery of who is behind Zoe’s abduction that needs a little work. This is where we sow the enigmatic sees of Romanov and his purpose for wanting Zoe if it is not revenge like it is assumed.
Similarly, that whole thing with the Russian Minister and Anton needs a lot more work because there appears to be a connection between him and Romanov, but there’s not. This is just Olga leaning on her connections to get a result.
Then Zoe takes off to find Romanov, or is it those seeking revenge, it’s not quite clear, and leaves John to contemplate his future. Perhaps a piece here between them that sets the tone for the relationship over the coming months would be good, and the trigger that sets John off on a quest to find her.
His excuses at the moment are wishy-washy at best.
Phew!!! Never knew self-criticism could be so harsh!
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 0 words, for a total of 8,871.
One of the recurring memories I have of my childhood was the annual pilgrimage to Grand Marais, Minnesota, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
It was the place where my father grew up, along with three brothers and a sister, and where his parents had been born, lived, and eventually died.
The other memory, that his parents never came to visit us, we always had to go to them. That, and the fact my mother hated them, that animosity borne out of an event at their wedding that no one ever spoke about.
Not until a long, long time later, after my father had passed away.
We stopped going when I turned eighteen, though I don’t think that was the reason. Mt grandparents hadn’t died or gone anywhere, it was just the week before our pilgrimage was to begin, my father announced there would be no more visits.
You could see the relief on our mother’s face, much less ours because they were, to put it mildly, quirky. Steven, the youngest brother put it more succinctly, weird and creepy.
Perhaps it had been the house, a large sprawling two-story mansion that had been added to over the years, and reputed to have thirteen bedrooms. Thirteen.
They had a butler, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and several housemaids. Odd, because I got the impression my grandfather didn’t work, and yet they were, reputedly, very wealthy. Equally odd, then, that wealth didn’t extend to my father.
Which, in the final analysis, was probably the reason why we stopped going. He had been cut out of the will.
…
Of course, none of this would have reached my consciousness if I had not received an email from one of the sones of my fathers, brother, and uncle who had never visited us, I’d seen probably three times in my life, and who had lived with his parents in the mansion.
I’d not seen, or heard of any children of any of the other brothers, or sisters, so this was a first, and aroused my curiosity. I had thought that our part of the family had been exorcised from all their collective memories.
Apparently not.
And, that curiosity would soon go into overdrive because with the email came an invitation to come and stay, and meet the other members of the family.
I had a sister, Molly, and called her once I got the email, and she said she had one too.
Was she going? Hell yes. It, for her, was going to be the unearthing of all the secrets.
What secrets, I asked, knowing full well there had been a few, but she had simply said I’d have to wait and see.
…
The drive brought back a lot of memories, and unconsciously I found myself listening to the same songs we did when Dad droves us.
Molly had come to my place, and we drove there together. In itself, it was a good reason for us to reunite after so long being apart. It was even more profound considering we did not live all that far apart, it was just life and family that got in the way.
She, like myself, found herself reliving the annual pilgrimages, her memories being hazier than mine, but that was because she was a lot younger.
She had been the one to leave home first, finding our restrictive parents unbearable. My departure took longer because my mother had implored me to stay, and not leave her with ‘that unbearable man’.
That final few miles from the outskirts of town, past the waterline, then inland was hushed with anticipation. I last remembered the house, although forbidding, as impeccably maintained, with gardens, I was sure, that featured in ‘Architectural Digest’.
This vision as we approached was so different than the last, in the last vestiges of the evening, a dark forbidding place still, only a lot more sinister. The gardens had been abandoned long ago, and everything was overgrown.
The fountain out front, the centerpiece of the gardens, was buried and gone.
The house had also fallen into disrepair, and I was surprised the local authorities hadn’t condemned it.
I parked the car in the driveway, and we sat there, staring at it.
“That motel back down the road is looking good,” Molly said.
The invitation also included staying in one of the thirteen rooms.
“Depends on how many ghosts there are.”
“The motel or here?”
I shrugged. “I guess we’d better get to the front door before it’s dark, just in case.”
Closer to the stairs leading up to a veranda, I could see the different shades of timber when rotten planks had been replaced. We made it to the front door, Molly hanging on to me just in case.
I pulled a ring dangling from a chain and heard a gong go off inside the house. A minute passed, two, then the door creaked open, and an old man in a dinner suit was standing there. “Mr. Garry, and Miss Molly, I presume.
He stood to one side before we answered, and we went in.
The inside was utterly different from the outside, having been renovated recently, much brighter than I remembered from the endless wood paneling. The old man ushered us into a large lounge room, on one side a huge log fire was burning, and around the walls, where there wasn’t a bookshelf full of books were family paintings.
“It’s like a mausoleum,” Molly said.
I recognized a lot of those faces in the paintings, including one of our father and mother together, probably not long after they were married. The men of that family all looked the same, except when it came to me, I looked more like my mother.
“Much better than it used to be.”
“I don’t remember much.”
To one side there was a large staircase that you could go up one side and down the other, and as children, we used to run up and down, and generally be annoying. Sliding down the banister was strictly forbidden, until after everyone went to bed.
I was half expecting to see the old man come from the depths of the house, but instead, a man that I could easily mistake as my father came through from the rear, where, I remembered, there was a room before the kitchens.
“Garry, I presume. And Molly. My God, it’s been too long.”
A shake of the hand for me, and a hug for Molly.
“David, or Jerry?”
“David. You remember. We used to run amok in this place.” He grinned.
He was the wild one, and all I did was follow. There were about seven of us, in the end, before we stopped coming.
“The others will be here tomorrow, and they’re dying to meet you. My dad was the last man standing, and he left the place to me, not that it was much by that time. I’ve spent years doing it up, but there’s a long way to go before it returns to its former glory. By the way, there are no ghosts in the bedrooms, and they are modernized with their own bathroom. I saw you out in the car before, looking horrified. Just a word to the wise, that motel does have ghosts. The jury is out on whether grandfather still roams the hallways, but I guess that’s something you’ll find out tonight. He was a horrid man by all accounts. Sorry, my wife says I babble when I’m nervous.”
“He does.” A woman, a few years older than Molly came out from the back.”
“Angelina?”
“You remember me.” She smiled.
I remembered her, had for a long time because back then, she was the first girl I thought I was madly in love with. The fact she was a cousin didn’t seem to matter. She just ignored me anyway.
And her beauty had not diminished over the years. “How could anyone forget you?”
“Yes, I had that effect on boys, didn’t I? It’s good to see you again.”
We both scored a hug, and yes, being close to her again did increase my heart rate just a little.
“Come,” David said, “sit and we’ll have a drink. Have you eaten?”
“Not for a while.”
“Then we were about to have a bite, I’m sure there’s plenty for everyone. Sit, and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“No wife, husband?”
“Yes on both accounts, but we would never bring them here. This family is difficult enough for us let alone outsiders. The rest of the group, well, you’ll see, are just plain quirky relatives. If you ever saw the Addams Family, TV series or movies, well, they’d fit right in here. But you’ll see. More on that soon.”
He and Angelina disappeared outback and silence fell over the room.
“Why do I get the feeling we might be murdered in our beds tonight?”
It was beginning to look like that was a possibility.
…
When David returned with the old man, Angelina, and what looked to be a maid with food and drinks, we sat down again, turning our fears of being murdered into a severe frightening of ghosts.
The old man was enough to think ghosts were alive in the house. It couldn’t possibly be the butler from the last time I saw him because he would have to be about 120 years old.
When all of us were settled, David began.
“There is another reason why I asked both of you here, along with all the others, by the way, there are around ten of us. Your father never told you the truth, or perhaps anything, of the situation when he stopped coming to visit his parents, did he?”
“He just said it was a difference of opinion, that his father would never see reason, didn’t like my mother or her family and gave up trying to be civil.”
“It was worse than that, he told him that if he didn’t give up your mother, he would cut him off from the family fortune, which eventually he did. It’s probably why you found life a little tougher for a few years.”
That was one way of putting it, we were taken out of our private schools and had just about all our leisure activities curtailed, and the worst, no more holidays. Mother even had to get a job, which disappointed her family, but they were not as rich as my father’s family was, so couldn’t help us financially.
“It was difficult.”
“Well, the good news is, your grandmother, our grandmother, was not as quirky or pedantic as her husband and never forgot the service your father did for her when he could. In that regard, she has left a bequest to both you and your sister, Molly. It’s been a long, hard battle to get it through the system, but it’s finally sorted.”
“I liked grandmother more than grandfather,” Molly said.
“Most of us did. He was a rebel himself, going against his family, a very interesting bunch themselves. Our quirkiness probably came from them, the last of the relatively unknown banking and railroad tycoons more famous in the 19th century than today where we are relatively forgotten. It is of course a blessing in disguise. But you ask, what is that quirkiness worth?”
“Not much I would imagine, after all this time. Our father taught us the value of money, so it’ll be nice to have some extra.”
“Some extra.” He smiled. “It’s about 125 million dollars, each. Enough I would say that you can now afford some quirks of your own.”
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
Was this going to be the very definition of dining with the devil?
Or was my curiosity going to be the death of me?
It was just one of a dozen questions I asked myself on that trip back to Nadia’s room. One reason I was going there was not in the expectation of a romantic interlude. No, this was something else. I kept reminding myself that Nadia was, first and foremost, a Cossatino, and the Cossatino’s were not people you wanted to be friends with.
When we arrived, she asked for a few minutes so she could change, so I stayed out on the balcony. It was a coolish night, a clear sky, and just a hint of salt in the air. We were not far from the ocean, and it reminded me of another lifetime, one where I was young enough not to have to worry about all that grown-up stuff.
I heard the door open behind me.
“Thanks for waiting.”
I turned, not sure what I was expecting. Certainly not a statuesque woman in training gear. She looked to me ready to go for a training run.
I walked past her into the room, faintly smelling of some perfume, and sat in one of the two chairs in the room. I watched her close the door, go over to the mini bar, get two bottles of beer out, and hand one to me.
It was an odd thought, being in a hotel room with Nadia, the last thing I’d ever be doing with her, let alone any other woman. My choices had always been limited, or so I had thought.
“I had this thought,” she said, leaning against the desk on the opposite side of the room, “that we should try and beat Vince at his own game.”
An interesting thought, was Nadia thinking of joining in Boggs’s treasure hunt, take it over, or was this a ruse, and had she been working with Vince all this time, and using us to get to the prize by another route. Or was it a rivalry with Vince that she wanted to win? Wasn’t it Boggs’s call who joined the expedition?
“We as in you and me, or we as in Boggs and you, or…”
“You’re overthinking it Smidge.”
“A word of advice, Nadia, if you’re trying to appeal to my good side, you might consider dropping the nickname. Only the people I hate use it, and I’m sure you don’t want me to add you to the list.”
Not necessarily warranted, and in my younger days I’d never dare to speak to her like that, but I felt I had the upper hand, at least for a short time.
“OK. Note to self, call Smidge Sam. Old habits are hard to break.”
In more ways than one, I thought.
“Well, overthinking it or not, it’s not my call to make. I’m assuming you want to join in on Boggs’s treasure hunt?”
“That was the idea.”
“You’re assuming that Boggs actually has the real map, or, in fact, there is such a thing. You have to remember that his father created all those maps, and it wouldn’t be hard to make one look more authentic than another, just to get a better price. Everything to do with the treasure seems to me like it’s one big hoax.”
“If that was the case, why do you think Vince is so wound up about it? My point is, Vince is simply all muscle and no brains. He always has been, so you have to assume that my grandfather has decided there’s something in the rumours. Granted he may have been working in league with Boogs senior, but don’t you think that in order to create forgeries, there had to be some sort of map to work from.”
An interesting premise.
“If it led to treasure on an island in the Wast Indies, I’d be more likely to believe in it, but here, a million miles from any of the pirate trading routes, and having a deep abiding disbelieve in hidden treasure still not recovered in this day and age, what do you think?”
“Does Boggs’s know about your scepticism?”
“I’ve told him enough times, but he has this bee in his bonnet, and I’m his best friend, probably his only friend. I humour him. And I doubt seriously if he’ll ever go through with it, because he’s never finished anything in his life. He gave me a copy of the map, but I suspect that was a copy of the one he gave Vince in the end.
“So, you think it’s not a worthwhile exercise?”
“What I think doesn’t matter. But I’ve got a question for you. Why have you come back here?”
“What if I told you it’s possible that the treasure is real.”
“I’d say you’ve been indulging in the drugs your family pedals.”
“What if I said I had proof?”
OK, where is this going? Did that mean she had proof, or that the Cossatino’s had proof, and was she about to open a can of worms?
“I’m listening.”
“That man that you found dead on Rico’s boat. His name was Jacob Stravinsky. He was an authority on pirates and their lost treasure, and had over the years, uncovered evidence that pirates had come here supposedly fleeing from the authorities, and that at least two of them could have hidden some of their treasure somewhere along this coastline. News of the discovery of several gold coins off the coast, not ten miles from here somehow caught Ales Benderby’s ear and he went to visit him.
“No one is sure what happened at that meeting, but I know Alex was there because that’s where I ran into him. And, the fool that he is, got drunk and told me, no bragged about how he was going to find the treasure and prove his worth to his father.”
“Then how did this Stravinsky end up dead on Rico’s boat.”
“Because Alex got what he wanted and made sure no one else found out.”
Sometimes they’re your fault, sometimes they’re not.
The accident I was in was not. Late at night driving home from work, a car came speeding out of a side street and T-boned my car.
It could have been worse, though the person who said it had a quite different definition of the word worse than I did.
To start with, I lost three months of my life in a coma, and even when I surfaced, it took another month to realize what had happened. Then came two months of working out my recovery plan.
If that wasn’t trial enough, what someone else might describe as the ‘last straw that broke the camel’s back’, my wife of 22 years decided to send me a text that morning, what was six months in hospital, to the day.
“I’m sorry, Joe, but enough is enough. I cannot visit you anymore, and for the sake of both our sanity, I think it’s time to draw a line in the sand. I know what happened isn’t your fault but given the prognosis, I don’t think I can cope with the situation. I need time to think about what will happen next and to do so, I’ll be going home to spend some time with family. Once again, I’m so sorry not to be doing this in person. I’ll let you know what I decide in due course. In the meantime, you have my best wishes for your recovery.”
In other words, goodbye. Her family lived in England, about 12,000 miles away in another hemisphere, and the likelihood of her returning was remote. We had meant to visit them, and had, in fact, booked the tickets shortly before the accident. I guess she couldn’t wait any longer.
My usual nurse came in for the first visit on this shift. She had become the familiar face on my journey, the one who made it worth waking up every morning.
“You look a little down in the dumps this morning. What’s up?”
She knew it couldn’t be for medical reasons because the doctor just yesterday had remarked how remarkable my recovery had been in the last week or so. Even I had been surprised given all the previous negative reports.
“Ever broken up by text?”
“What do you mean?”
“Frances has decided she no longer wants to be involved. I can’t say I blame her, she has put her whole life on hold because of this.”
“That’s surprising. She’s never shown any disappointment.”
“Six months have been a long time for everyone. We were supposed to be going home so she could see her family. Maybe that’s what it’s all about.”
I gave her the phone and she read the message.
Then she handed it back. “That’s goodbye, Tom. I’m sorry. And no, I’ve never had a breakup by text, but I guess there could always be a first time.”
She spent the next ten minutes going through the morning ritual, then said, “I’ve heard there’s a new doctor coming to visit you. Whatever has happened in the last few days had tongues wagging, and you might just become the next modern miracle. Fame and fortune await.”
“Just being able to walk again will be miracle enough.”
That had been the worst of it. The prognosis that it was likely I’d never be able to walk again, or work, and the changes to our lives that would cause. I knew Frances was bitterly disappointed that she might become the spouse who had to spend the rest of her life looking after, and though she had said it didn’t matter, that she would be there for me, deep down I knew a commitment like that took more internal fortitude than she had.
She ran her own business, managed three children into adulthood, and had a life other than what we had together. When I was fit and able, and nothing got in the way, it had worked. Stopping everything to cater to my problems had severely curtailed her life. Something had to give, and it had.
But, as I said, I didn’t blame her. She had tried, putting in a brave face day after day but once the daily visits slipped to every other day, to once a week, I knew then the ship was heading towards the rocks.
This morning it foundered.
I pondered the situation for an hour before I sent a reply. “I believe you have made the right decision. It’s time to call it and going home and take some time to consider what to do next is right. In normal circumstances, we would not be considering any of this, but these are not normal circumstances. But, just in case you are worried about the effect of all of this on me, don’t. I will get over it, whatever the result is, and what you need to do first and foremost is to concentrate on what is best for you. If that means drawing a line on this relationship, so be it. All I want for you is for you to be happy, and clearly, having to contend with this, and everything else on your plate, is not helping. I am glad we had what time we had together and will cherish the memories forever, and I will always love you, no matter what you decide.”
It was heart-felt, and I meant it. But life was not going to be the same without her.
…
I’d dozed off after sending the message, and only woke again when my usual doctor came into the room on his morning rounds, the usual entourage of doctors and interns in tow. I’d been a great case for sparking endless debate on the best route for my recovery among those fresh out of medical school. Some ideas were radical, others pie in the sky, but one that seemed implausible had got a hearing, and then the go-ahead, mainly because there was little else that apparently could be done.
That doctor, and now another I hadn’t seen before was standing in the front row, rather than at the back.
The doctor in charge went through the basics of the case, as he did every day, mainly because the entourage changed daily. Then, he deferred to the radical doctor as I decided to call her.
She went through the details of a discovery she had made, and the recommendation she’d made as a possible road to recovery, one which involved several radical operations which had been undertaken by the elderly man standing beside her. When I first met him, I thought he was an escaped patient from the psychiatric ward, not the pre-eminent back surgeon reputed to be the miracle worker himself.
It seemed, based on the latest x-rays that a miracle had occurred, but whether it was or not would be known for another week. Then, if all went well, I would be able to get out of bed, and, at the very least, be able to stand on my own. In the meantime, I had endless sessions of physio in the lead-up to the big event. Six months in bed had taken its toll on everything, and the week’s work was going to correct some of that.
It meant there was hope, and despite what I said and thought, hope was what I needed.
There had been ups and downs before this, fuelled by a morning when I woke up and found I could wriggle my toes. It was after the second operation, and I thought, given the amount of pain killers, it had been my imagination.
When I mentioned it, there was some initial excitement, and, yes, it was true, I wasn’t going out of my mind, it was real. The downside was, I couldn’t move anything else, and other than an encouraging sign, as the days passed, and nothing more happened, the faces got longer.
Then, the physiotherapist moved in, and started working on the areas that should be coming back to life. I felt little, maybe the pain killers again, until the next, and perhaps the last operation. I managed to lift my left leg a fraction of an inch.
But we’d been here before, and I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
…
Annabel, the daughter that lived on the other side of the country, finally arrived to visit me. I had thought, not being so far away she might have come earlier, but a few phone calls had sorted out her absence. Firstly, there was no much use visiting a coma patient, second, she was in a delicate stage of her professional career and a break might be the end of it, and thirdly, she accepted that I didn’t want to see her until I was much better.
She was not very happy about it, but it was a costly venture for her, in terms of time, being away from a young family, and just getting there.
Now, the time had come. She had a conference to attend, and I was happy to play second fiddle.
After the hugs and a few tears, she settled in the uncomfortable bedside chair.
“You don’t look very different than the last time I saw you,” she said.
“Hospitals have perfected the art of hiding the worst of it, but it’s true. The swelling had receded, the physios have revived the muscles, and I have a little movement again.”
“The injuries are not permanent?”
“Oh, they’re permanent, but not as bad as first thought.”
“Pity my mother isn’t here.”
“She was, day after day, through the darkest period. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But your mother is an independent woman, and she has always been free to do what she wants, and I would not have had it any other way.”
“But deserting you in the middle of all this…”
“It’s been very debilitating on her. I can understand her reasons, and so should you. She will still be your mother no matter what happens to us.”
There had been a number of phone calls, from each of the children, decrying her actions after she had sent a text message to each of them telling them what she was doing. She had not told them she was leaving, in so many word, but leaving the door ajar, perhaps to allay their fears she was deserting them too. Annabel had been furious. The other two, not so much.
“And this latest development?”
I had also told her about the miracle worker, and the possibilities, without trying to get hopes up.
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s a three. We’ve been here before, so I’m going to save the excitement for when it happens, if it happens.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
It was a question I’d asked myself a number of times, one that I didn’t want an answer to. Hope was staving it off, each day a new day of discovery, and a day closer to the idea I might walk again. I had to believe it would happen, if not the next day, the next week, month, year, that it would eventually happen.
For now, all I had to do was stand on my own two feet.
It was ironic, in a way, that simple statement. ‘Stand on your own two feet’. Right then, it seemed so near, and yet, at the same time, so far away.
I didn’t answer that question, but did what I usually did with visitors, run a distraction and talk about everything else. This visit was no exception. I had a lot of catching up to do.
It’s odd how some call the day of momentous events D-Day because to me nothing would be more momentous than the invasion of France during the second world war.
Others were not quite of the same opinion. It was going to be a momentous day.
It started the same as any other.
The morning routine when the duty nurse came to do the checks. Then the physio, now a permanent fixture mid-morning, just after the tea lady arrived. Deliberate, I thought, to deprive me of my tea break, and some unbelievably delicious coconut cookies.
Then the routine changed, and the escort arrived to take me down to the room where the physio had set up an obstacle course. It looked like one, and I’d told him so when I first saw it, and he had said by the time he was finished with me, I’d be able to go from start to finish without breaking a sweat.
In my mind perhaps, but not with this broken body. I didn’t say that because I was meant to be positive.
An entourage arrived for the main event. I would have been happier to fail in front of the doctor, the miracle worker, and the physio, but it seemed everyone wanted a front row seat. If it worked, the physio confided in me, there was fame and fortune being mentioned in Lancet, what was a prestigious medical journal.
Expectations were running high.
The physio had gone through the program at least a hundred times, and the previous day we had got to the point where I was sitting on the side of the bed. We’d tried this ordinary manoeuvre several times, previously without success under my own steam but this morning, for some reason it was different.
I was able to sit up, and then, with a struggle move my legs part of the way, and with a little help for the rest.
What was encouraging, was being able to swing my legs a short distance. IT was those simple things that everyone could do without thinking, that had seemed impossible not a month before, that got people excited. I didn’t know how I felt other than I missed those simple things.
Then the moment had arrived. Hushed silence.
There was a structure in place. All I had to do was pulled myself across, at the same time sliding off the bed and into a standing position. There was a safety harness attached so that if my grip slipped it would prevent me from falling.
It was probably not the time to tell them the pain in my lower back was getting worse.
So, like I’d been instructed, and going one step further than the day before, I reached out, grabbed the bars and pulled myself up and over, at the same time, sliding off the side of the bed. I could feel the tug of the safety harness which told me I had left the safety of the bed, and was in mid motion.
I could feel my legs straightening, and then very softly landing on the floor, the safety harness letting my body drop down slowly.
The pain increased exponentially as the weight came down onto my legs, but my body had stopped moving. I could not feel the tightness of the harness, but a rather odd sensation in my legs.
All that time I had been concentrating so hard that I had heard nothing, not even the encouraging words from the physio.
Until I realised, from the noise around me, that it had worked. I was standing on my own two feet, albeit a little shakily.
And I heard the physio say, in his inimitable way, “Today you just landed on the moon. Tomorrow, it’s going to be one small step for mankind. Well done.”
“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.
When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.
From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.
There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.
Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.
Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?
Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?
Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?
First, how did Larry find out I was the one behind his brother’s death?
It begged the question of whether there was a leak in Rodby’s organization because he was the only one other than the logistics team that knew anything about that mission.
It could be that he assumed that being part of the team sent to neutralize a problem, that I was the perpetrator or I knew who was. Either way, I didn’t like my chances of surviving an interrogation.
Or someone had been taking photos of the crime scene, even though I’d taken precautions not to be recognized, slipped up, but that would assume he had photos of everyone on the team. I made a note to ask about the health of the other team members.
I would have to compile a list of questions to ask Larry when we finally met, what one might call a fly on the wall moment.
The second, how did Larry know of my association with Juliet. She was a respected doctor in a respectable hospital when I last saw her.
To be known to Larry, she had to have fallen from that pedestal. Given what the Waterville organization was known for, all of the branches of crime seemed far removed from who and what she was.
Some investigation was needed, and I sent a message to Alfie on the burner phone he left me. It had a few other tricks up its sleeve like recording conversations and taking photos that were automatically sent back to base, and an app that detected recording equipment like those used by the security services.
If Juliet was wired, I’d know.
And speaking of Juliet, the third question was how she going to orchestrate a casual meeting between us, and could I muster the necessary surprise when we finally crossed paths.
When a message arrived later in the day in response to my query, it had a current photo and an abbreviated resume of her life since the last time I saw her.
The first sentence that caught my eye was that she was no longer a doctor. Well, not a practicing doctor. It seemed the stress of working endless hours in the hospital led to an accident when she had been overtired, which led to an addiction to painkillers when led to self-medicating to making a mistake.
That led to seeking other means of fulfilling the addiction, and that was a slippery slope. Without reading the fine print, it was a simple connection from ex-doctor to addict to a soul depended on a person the likes of Larry. To him, a doctor of her caliber would be useful in patching up criminals who couldn’t go to hospitals to be patched up after committing a crime and getting injured if not shot in the process
Now, Larry had another use for her.
The current photo of her showed a woman who had aged more than normal, perhaps as a result of drug abuse, thinner than I remembered her, and with straw blonde hair replacing the rich burgundy she used to have.
Her recent resume was more of a horror story than the life she may once have expected for herself, but desperation often led people down paths the least desired, and saying they had choices was not always true. It would be interesting to learn if she would be willing to tell me about any of it.
There was also a footnote that told me where and when would be arriving, the airport, the following day, and I decided to go and check her out, to make sure I’d recognize her when the time came. As she was now, I didn’t think, without the photograph Alfie had sent me, I would have recognized her on the street.
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been a high turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point every thing goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realises his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
In a day of going over old ground and making it new again, I have revisited Zoe’s residence in Paris at the time John called, and found it empty, except for some kid who was all ‘get lost or suffer the consequences.’
Who is he? We flesh that story out, and how it relates to Zoe and those early days in the story.
Similarly, I’m not happy still with how Worthington discovers Zoe, and this is going to need some more work, and definitely a rewrite.
In fact, I might have to revisit his whole appearance in the story and make it a little less bombastic and a little more subdued seething anger.
The whole Marseilles episode is good, it’s just the end and this discovery of who is behind Zoe’s abduction that needs a little work. This is where we sow the enigmatic sees of Romanov and his purpose for wanting Zoe if it is not revenge like it is assumed.
Similarly, that whole thing with the Russian Minister and Anton needs a lot more work because there appears to be a connection between him and Romanov, but there’s not. This is just Olga leaning on her connections to get a result.
Then Zoe takes off to find Romanov, or is it those seeking revenge, it’s not quite clear, and leaves John to contemplate his future. Perhaps a piece here between them that sets the tone for the relationship over the coming months would be good, and the trigger that sets John off on a quest to find her.
His excuses at the moment are wishy-washy at best.
Phew!!! Never knew self-criticism could be so harsh!
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 0 words, for a total of 8,871.
One of the recurring memories I have of my childhood was the annual pilgrimage to Grand Marais, Minnesota, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
It was the place where my father grew up, along with three brothers and a sister, and where his parents had been born, lived, and eventually died.
The other memory, that his parents never came to visit us, we always had to go to them. That, and the fact my mother hated them, that animosity borne out of an event at their wedding that no one ever spoke about.
Not until a long, long time later, after my father had passed away.
We stopped going when I turned eighteen, though I don’t think that was the reason. Mt grandparents hadn’t died or gone anywhere, it was just the week before our pilgrimage was to begin, my father announced there would be no more visits.
You could see the relief on our mother’s face, much less ours because they were, to put it mildly, quirky. Steven, the youngest brother put it more succinctly, weird and creepy.
Perhaps it had been the house, a large sprawling two-story mansion that had been added to over the years, and reputed to have thirteen bedrooms. Thirteen.
They had a butler, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and several housemaids. Odd, because I got the impression my grandfather didn’t work, and yet they were, reputedly, very wealthy. Equally odd, then, that wealth didn’t extend to my father.
Which, in the final analysis, was probably the reason why we stopped going. He had been cut out of the will.
…
Of course, none of this would have reached my consciousness if I had not received an email from one of the sones of my fathers, brother, and uncle who had never visited us, I’d seen probably three times in my life, and who had lived with his parents in the mansion.
I’d not seen, or heard of any children of any of the other brothers, or sisters, so this was a first, and aroused my curiosity. I had thought that our part of the family had been exorcised from all their collective memories.
Apparently not.
And, that curiosity would soon go into overdrive because with the email came an invitation to come and stay, and meet the other members of the family.
I had a sister, Molly, and called her once I got the email, and she said she had one too.
Was she going? Hell yes. It, for her, was going to be the unearthing of all the secrets.
What secrets, I asked, knowing full well there had been a few, but she had simply said I’d have to wait and see.
…
The drive brought back a lot of memories, and unconsciously I found myself listening to the same songs we did when Dad droves us.
Molly had come to my place, and we drove there together. In itself, it was a good reason for us to reunite after so long being apart. It was even more profound considering we did not live all that far apart, it was just life and family that got in the way.
She, like myself, found herself reliving the annual pilgrimages, her memories being hazier than mine, but that was because she was a lot younger.
She had been the one to leave home first, finding our restrictive parents unbearable. My departure took longer because my mother had implored me to stay, and not leave her with ‘that unbearable man’.
That final few miles from the outskirts of town, past the waterline, then inland was hushed with anticipation. I last remembered the house, although forbidding, as impeccably maintained, with gardens, I was sure, that featured in ‘Architectural Digest’.
This vision as we approached was so different than the last, in the last vestiges of the evening, a dark forbidding place still, only a lot more sinister. The gardens had been abandoned long ago, and everything was overgrown.
The fountain out front, the centerpiece of the gardens, was buried and gone.
The house had also fallen into disrepair, and I was surprised the local authorities hadn’t condemned it.
I parked the car in the driveway, and we sat there, staring at it.
“That motel back down the road is looking good,” Molly said.
The invitation also included staying in one of the thirteen rooms.
“Depends on how many ghosts there are.”
“The motel or here?”
I shrugged. “I guess we’d better get to the front door before it’s dark, just in case.”
Closer to the stairs leading up to a veranda, I could see the different shades of timber when rotten planks had been replaced. We made it to the front door, Molly hanging on to me just in case.
I pulled a ring dangling from a chain and heard a gong go off inside the house. A minute passed, two, then the door creaked open, and an old man in a dinner suit was standing there. “Mr. Garry, and Miss Molly, I presume.
He stood to one side before we answered, and we went in.
The inside was utterly different from the outside, having been renovated recently, much brighter than I remembered from the endless wood paneling. The old man ushered us into a large lounge room, on one side a huge log fire was burning, and around the walls, where there wasn’t a bookshelf full of books were family paintings.
“It’s like a mausoleum,” Molly said.
I recognized a lot of those faces in the paintings, including one of our father and mother together, probably not long after they were married. The men of that family all looked the same, except when it came to me, I looked more like my mother.
“Much better than it used to be.”
“I don’t remember much.”
To one side there was a large staircase that you could go up one side and down the other, and as children, we used to run up and down, and generally be annoying. Sliding down the banister was strictly forbidden, until after everyone went to bed.
I was half expecting to see the old man come from the depths of the house, but instead, a man that I could easily mistake as my father came through from the rear, where, I remembered, there was a room before the kitchens.
“Garry, I presume. And Molly. My God, it’s been too long.”
A shake of the hand for me, and a hug for Molly.
“David, or Jerry?”
“David. You remember. We used to run amok in this place.” He grinned.
He was the wild one, and all I did was follow. There were about seven of us, in the end, before we stopped coming.
“The others will be here tomorrow, and they’re dying to meet you. My dad was the last man standing, and he left the place to me, not that it was much by that time. I’ve spent years doing it up, but there’s a long way to go before it returns to its former glory. By the way, there are no ghosts in the bedrooms, and they are modernized with their own bathroom. I saw you out in the car before, looking horrified. Just a word to the wise, that motel does have ghosts. The jury is out on whether grandfather still roams the hallways, but I guess that’s something you’ll find out tonight. He was a horrid man by all accounts. Sorry, my wife says I babble when I’m nervous.”
“He does.” A woman, a few years older than Molly came out from the back.”
“Angelina?”
“You remember me.” She smiled.
I remembered her, had for a long time because back then, she was the first girl I thought I was madly in love with. The fact she was a cousin didn’t seem to matter. She just ignored me anyway.
And her beauty had not diminished over the years. “How could anyone forget you?”
“Yes, I had that effect on boys, didn’t I? It’s good to see you again.”
We both scored a hug, and yes, being close to her again did increase my heart rate just a little.
“Come,” David said, “sit and we’ll have a drink. Have you eaten?”
“Not for a while.”
“Then we were about to have a bite, I’m sure there’s plenty for everyone. Sit, and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“No wife, husband?”
“Yes on both accounts, but we would never bring them here. This family is difficult enough for us let alone outsiders. The rest of the group, well, you’ll see, are just plain quirky relatives. If you ever saw the Addams Family, TV series or movies, well, they’d fit right in here. But you’ll see. More on that soon.”
He and Angelina disappeared outback and silence fell over the room.
“Why do I get the feeling we might be murdered in our beds tonight?”
It was beginning to look like that was a possibility.
…
When David returned with the old man, Angelina, and what looked to be a maid with food and drinks, we sat down again, turning our fears of being murdered into a severe frightening of ghosts.
The old man was enough to think ghosts were alive in the house. It couldn’t possibly be the butler from the last time I saw him because he would have to be about 120 years old.
When all of us were settled, David began.
“There is another reason why I asked both of you here, along with all the others, by the way, there are around ten of us. Your father never told you the truth, or perhaps anything, of the situation when he stopped coming to visit his parents, did he?”
“He just said it was a difference of opinion, that his father would never see reason, didn’t like my mother or her family and gave up trying to be civil.”
“It was worse than that, he told him that if he didn’t give up your mother, he would cut him off from the family fortune, which eventually he did. It’s probably why you found life a little tougher for a few years.”
That was one way of putting it, we were taken out of our private schools and had just about all our leisure activities curtailed, and the worst, no more holidays. Mother even had to get a job, which disappointed her family, but they were not as rich as my father’s family was, so couldn’t help us financially.
“It was difficult.”
“Well, the good news is, your grandmother, our grandmother, was not as quirky or pedantic as her husband and never forgot the service your father did for her when he could. In that regard, she has left a bequest to both you and your sister, Molly. It’s been a long, hard battle to get it through the system, but it’s finally sorted.”
“I liked grandmother more than grandfather,” Molly said.
“Most of us did. He was a rebel himself, going against his family, a very interesting bunch themselves. Our quirkiness probably came from them, the last of the relatively unknown banking and railroad tycoons more famous in the 19th century than today where we are relatively forgotten. It is of course a blessing in disguise. But you ask, what is that quirkiness worth?”
“Not much I would imagine, after all this time. Our father taught us the value of money, so it’ll be nice to have some extra.”
“Some extra.” He smiled. “It’s about 125 million dollars, each. Enough I would say that you can now afford some quirks of your own.”
